


i’ve got a sin under my skin (it’s burning like fire and turns my bones into ash)

by PaleAssassin



Series: look at all these sinners (trying their hands at being saints) [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Angst, Fem!Tony, Gen, Genderswap, Hurt without the comfort, Hurt/Comfort, I don't know what to tag this as, follows iron man story as well as first avengers, i really need to start tagging like a normal person, kind of, like always, might have missed a few things, so much angst okay I don't know what happened, this does not have pairings yet because i'm weird like that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-30 03:21:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1013476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaleAssassin/pseuds/PaleAssassin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Antonia Stark is not a hero. That's why she has Iron Woman.<br/>(As always, I'm terrible at summaries. I promise, the actual story is better.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i’ve got a sin under my skin (it’s burning like fire and turns my bones into ash)

**Author's Note:**

> *Sneaks in quietly* So yeah, I'm actually alive. I'm sorry I can't finish that one Teen Wolf fic. I don't know why I even post things anymore. I never finish them.  
> But anyway, hello. First, no, scratch that. Second Avengers fic that I've ever written. Don't ask me where the first one is. You don't want to see it.  
> This is probably really OOC to a lot of you, but I wanted to try to write fem!tony. I have the urge to write Tony as a female all the time; this time, it actually worked. This was originally going to be a hell of a lot longer, and I may try to continue it into like post-Avengers-movie time and try to slip in some Stony and some Clint/Coulson (please don't judge me), but right now, it's almost ten thirty and I have school tomorrow. So this is all you're getting for now.  
> That's enough beginning notes, so I'll leave you to the story.

The first time Antonia Stark is asked who she really is, she’s twenty one years old, her father has just left the company he built in her hands, and there are hundreds of people staring at her and millions more watching her expressions through their TV’s. They’re watching for any movement, any sign of weakness, like a wolf watching its prey. And she knows what they want. They want something they can twist, that they can manipulate and coerce into what they want others to see. They want her to be easy to crush under their boots, because she’s a woman and she’s smart and everyone thinks she needs to be brought down from her high pedestal of childhood-prodigy-and-nymphomaniac-billionaire.

She knows what they want. Instead, she gives them all a blood-red smirk, wide, bloodshot eyes staring from behind dark glasses, leans forward and purrs, “Why, I’m Antonia Stark. Shouldn’t you know me?”

And they still twist it. They say that she’s egotistical, narcissistic, that she thinks she’s better than everyone else. In hindsight, it feels like she should be. No, _feel_ isn’t the right word. That’s what’s expected of her. That’s what they all see. The Great Antonia Stark, just another pretty face hiding a monster inside. That’s what they see, and that’s what she gives them.

The day after that press conference, Antonia stares at the tabloids, laughs, and downs another shot of whiskey. In the end, she’s so drunk that she crawls on the floor to get to the bathroom, where she throws up every ounce of everything she’s drank or eaten in the past twelve hours. She falls asleep on the floor an hour later, pressing a hot red cheek to the cool tile and hoping it would stop the burning in her heart.

She thinks, that’s who I am anyway.

She thinks, at least they can see the monster behind the mask.

\-----

For a while, Antonia Stark is the only one who truly knows Antonia Stark. She’s in the news when she’s born, all wrinkled skin and a shock of dark black hair on her tiny head. By the time she’s four, Antonia has mastered the act of giving the people what they want; a fake smile, a little tear every now and again, a happy, bubbly little girl who has everything. Behind closed doors, Antonia Stark is nothing like what she shows. She’s determined, she’s cold, she’s brilliant. Antonia Stark is everything her father is, with one difference.

She’s sad.

\-----

Antonia gave up on pleasing her father when she was eight years old. Eight years old, starting sixth grade at some prestigious all-girls boarding school, building robots in her spare time and kicking asses left and right, and her father doesn’t care. He looks at her like she’s an ant, like she’s a pile of unknowns he doesn’t want to bother with. He wanted a son, someone he could teach his craft and someone who could keep the business alive. Instead, he gets a smartass daughter who’d rather play with a soldering iron than a doll. And he still isn’t happy. He never was.

Her mother doesn’t really care either; she downs pills and chases the bitterness with a glass of the finest scotch money can buy. They both drink and shout and kill each other (and themselves) slowly and ignore the fact that they have a daughter who wants nothing more than love.

(and she’ll realize, years later, when she puts a bottle of her mother’s favorite scotch and two glasses on their graves, that she never heard the words “I love you” from either of them, and she’ll break the scotch over their graves and set them on fire)

\-----

She graduates high school at fifteen, and the only people there to see her walk across some stage to get a piece of paper saying “Congratulations, you made it!” were Jarvis, the family butler, and her Aunt Peggy.

Jarvis smiles and pats her on the back when she walks up to them. Jarvis understands, more than anyone, that she doesn’t need praises and washed-up words. He knows when praise is due, and when she doesn’t want it, he smiles and pats her on the back, or kisses her forehead, and she understands.

Aunt Peggy looks at her and smiles, praises her intelligence and her beauty and all Antonia can think about is how much she hates who she’s become. She’ll dance naked in the tabloids at fifteen, drinks and parties and fucks anything with a pulse that won’t look too close and see tearstained, pudgy cheeks and eyes like burning blue like a blowtorch. She’ll do whatever she can to make them think she’s all grown up because Antonia Stark was only a child when she was too young to talk.

Antonia is fourteen, picks up a tube of red lipstick, spreads it over thin, cracked lips, stares at the bloody monster in the mirror and says, “They’ll see it someday. They’ll see the beast behind my eyes.”

\-----

Antonia becomes Tony in college, when the boys and the girls don’t look too close and the bars don’t check her for ID. Jarvis dies, Aunt Peggy dies, and her parents don’t care enough to notice their daughter’s become a wild beast. So she drinks, curses, and fucks her way through college. She calls herself Tony because Antonia sounds like a victim, sounds like another washed up pretty-face, and that’s not what she is.

She meets James Rhodes, and she doesn’t push him away like the rest. She tries to fuck him, fails, and then lets him in. He is the first to learn who the real Antonia Stark is, because it’s Rhodey, and he doesn’t care that she’s a monster. It takes her a long time to figure out why he wormed his way into her affections. But eventually, she realizes that he doesn’t look at her like she’s a fuck up. He doesn’t look at her like everyone else does, like the Stark heir gone wild, like a child dressing up in her mother’s clothes, like an egotistical, slutty maniac in red lipstick and high heels.

Instead, Rhodey looks at her like she’s broken.

It angered her at first, made her see red, red like her lipstick, red like the bloodstains on her carpet from when her father was too drunk to care if his daughter’s face got bruised by his fist. It angered her because why did he, this man barely old enough to be in college, barely smart enough to warrant talking to, get to see who she was inside? So she throws a punch, gets drunk enough to black out, and wakes up to Rhodey sleeping on a chair next to her bed, freshly bruised face glaring at her and telling her “You see what you are now? Do you see the monster?” And she realizes that he gets to know her because he understands better than most. Better than her parents, the tabloids, her teachers, her fuckbuddies.

Tony Stark is not a just pretty face rich enough to get shitfaced and dumb enough to let everyone see. Tony Stark is an animal, broken and tired, but wild and free.

\-----

Tony is seventeen, and she asks Rhodey, “Who am I?”

And they’re drunk and tired, Rhodey has a test in four hours, and Tony has to sit through another lecture on something she’s already mastered, but he answers anyway.

“You’re Tony Stark.”

And she takes it. After all, it’s better than what she could’ve thought of.

( _monster, bitch, whore, not worth your weight in gold. you’ll be just like your daddy, a waste of space_. _you’re_ nothing, _antonia_. **nothing at all.** )

\-----

Her parents die in some freak accident, something that sparks sympathy and grieving all throughout the world. Everyone comes up to her, says how sorry they are that her parent’s left her at such a young age, old women cry on her shoulder, board members murmur their grievances while not looking her in the face, and Tony doesn’t care. She puts on another face, another plastic look, accepts the sorrows coming towards her with a grain of salt and a shot of tequila. She smiles when she needs to, lets a tear fall down her cheek when she says “My father was the greatest man I knew.”

She chokes the words out, letting the bitter lie settle on her tongue. Let’s them think she loved her father, let’s them think he loved her back. She smiles at the cameras, puts on a brave face, and watches her parents be lowered into the ground. She listens to eulogies and heartbreaks and “I know this must be hard for you, dear”, and she lets them believe that she cares. She gets through the press conference, lets them think they can walk all over her, and she lets them believe she’s nothing but a hollowed out shell of a woman.

Then, she goes home, puts on a baggy sweatshirt and jeans and works on making something that will show them who she is. She gets drunk and rambles on the phone to Rhodey that none of these people _know_ who she is. Rhodey listens patiently, waits for her to run out of breath or start sobbing or vomit, and asks, “So who are you, Tony?”

And Tony laughs and laughs, takes a drink from her mother’s favorite scotch, and replies, “I’m Antonia Edlyn Stark. Who else do I need to be?”

The lie tastes a bit like liquid poison on her tongue, so she chases it down with another swig of scotch and disconnects the phone.

She wants to say, “I don’t know anymore.”

She wants to say, “I need someone to tell me that.”

\-----

Tony builds JARVIS when she’s drunk and tired. She hadn’t slept in three days, hadn’t eaten in two, and was drinking her weight in whiskey when she thought it’d be a good idea to have a robot butler. So she draws up the plans, begins working, and is halfway sober when she realizes what she’s doing. But she goes on anyway, because it’d be nice to have another friend.

She gives the AI a personality, a real, growing personality, which, in hindsight, should have been a bad thing. Tony wanted a friend, and she was really bad at keeping friends. So when she finally finishes the AI, installs it into her mainframe of her house, connects him to Dummy and You and Butterfingers, and hears docile, British tones saying “How may I serve you, Sir?”, she laughs until she cries.

“JARVIS,” She says, looking up at her ceiling with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue in her hand, “JARVIS, I may have made a mistake in making you sentient, but I want you to know that I named you after the man who became my father when my own deadbeat dad wanted nothing to do with me. I want you to know that you don’t have to like me, but if you could just please put up with me,”

She swallowed hard, letting the Johnnie Walker in her hand settle on the floor with a loud clink, “If you could just put up with me, I’d like you to be my friend. I want you to think for yourself, make your own decisions, but I’d really like another friend.”

The AI didn’t say anything for a long while. Eventually, Tony rambles to him about Howard Stark, and the real Jarvis, and Aunt Peggy and Rhodey. She drinks the entire bottle of whiskey and, finally, passes out on the floor.

JARVIS had Dummy and Butterfingers bring a blanket to cover her up, and You to get a glass of water out for her.

Tony wakes up and doesn’t feel so empty and alone anymore.

\-----

She meets Pepper by accident. Well, not really by accident. Tony isn’t paying attention to minute details, isn’t paying attention to much of anything, really, and some little red-headed secretary comes up and points out a mistake she made. Normally, the thought of making a mistake angered Tony. She’s supposed to show the world that she’s better than her father, better than them all, that she can do what any man can do, only in high heels and red lipstick.

Instead, she hires the girl on the spot as a personal secretary.

It takes only a few weeks for the girl to get over her hero-worship of Tony. She’s volatile, narcissistic, nymphomaniacal, and doesn’t understand how to run a business. Pepper – because Tony refused to call her Virginia, because, who the hell names their child after a state? – finds herself pealing the normally cool and collected business woman off the floor at odd hours of the morning, when she’s drunk too much and she’s crying about something stupid. Pepper sees her venerable side, the side that only three other people have seen. Pepper gets to see the monster inside because Pepper knows how to handle those situations.

She just picks Tony up, tucks her into bed, gives her a glass of water, a bucket, and a few aspirin to take in the morning. She sits by Tony’s head, running her slender fingers soothingly through tangled black hair and asks, “What am I going to do with you, Tony?”

And Tony never knows how to answer that. Sometimes, she thinks, “Maybe you should just leave.”

And then sometimes, in the back of her mind, when everything is quiet and she’s left alone in her empty, terrifying head, she thinks “Maybe you could try to fix me.”

\-----

Afghanistan was Hell. Whether or not there is a God, Tony knew that Afghanistan had to be Hell. Hell was full of fire, full of dust and scorching and shouts and cold hands and burning skin. Afghanistan was shrapnel and poison and blood in the back of her throat and a car battery in her chest and _she just can’t do it anymore_.

And then she’s back in reality, back to where waterboarding is a daily occurrence and Yinsen tells her not to move too much, there’s pain, death, sand in her mouth. She builds a new heart with Yinsen, something to replace the car battery (to replace the old, shriveled, black heart given to her by her father and her “friends” and everyone who ever told her she couldn’t because she’s a _woman_ andshe’s _weak_ ), tells him she’ll get him out, she’ll save him, because it’s all she can do.

The little smile he would give her when she talked about rescue said a lot about him. He knew he’d never make it back. He knew she was full of empty promises. Yet he let her believe them, let her hope that she’d get them both out, that  she can save someone, anyone, even if it isn’t herself.

She gets herself out, though. Leaves him, leaves this man who gave her a new heart, a new body, a new understanding, leaves him bleeding in the dust. Leaves him wide-eyed and hopeful and “Don’t waste your life, Antonia.”

She gets herself out, wanders in the desert for hours, bleeding and broken and watching blue light flood from her new heart, and when the helicopters come and she falls to her knees, she throws up a peace sign. It’s ironic, because she’s remembering a poor soldier who only wanted a picture, and she threw up a peace sign because it was funny, it was ironic, and here it was again. But this time, it’s a promise. A promise to an old man.

Rhodey hugs her when he gets to her, makes a joke about the “funvee”, and Tony can’t help but laugh. He keeps ahold of her the entire flight, and he was always there when she needed him to be. When they’re on their way home, finally, after hours of being poked and prodded and wrapped up like a mummy, Tony is almost asleep on his shoulder and she mumbles, “I won’t waste it, Yinsen. I promise.”

Rhodey never asks what she means, and when she cuts off weapons manufacturing, cuts off most ties with the military, Rhodey rants and pesters, but in his eyes, he understands.

He understands because he has to. Because, as one of the two people left in the world who truly know Antonia Stark, he has an insight into what makes her tick. And now, what makes her tick is a power source, not a heart.

Sometimes, Tony thinks she never had a heart to begin with.

\-----

Obie betrays her, and Tony can’t find it in her to be shocked. There’s nothing left in her chest anymore; no heart, no glowing battery to keep the shrapnel from invading the shriveled black thing that pumped blood through her system. Obie took out her heart, the one she made for herself, and Tony can’t find it in her to be surprised anymore.

There’s still the fear of death, though. Still the fear of letting Yinsen down. “Don’t waste your life, Antonia,” He’d said, and she doesn’t intend to. So she drags herself through her house, through empty halls and broken memories, makes it to her workshop. She almost didn’t make it. She stumbles, and she crawls, and she begs whoever is listening to just _let her live_. And Dummy, beautiful Dummy, hands her the first heart, the heart that Yinsen helped her make, helps her survive. The pain she felt while the shrapnel forced its way through her veins was enough to make anyone pass out, but somehow, she managed to put the old arc reactor back in.

And then Rhodey shows up, and everything is a blur until Obadiah Stane is nothing more than a memory.

\-----

“I am Iron Man,” Tony purrs as she smirks her blood-red smirk. The entire audience erupts into questions, into how she did it, into how a woman defeated a man in a destructive metal suit. How someone so delicate and fragile could ever possibly hope to defeat a man in any way.

She knows that’s what they mean, even if they don’t say it outright. Tony Stark knows the public better than she knows herself sometimes. So she raises her hands for quiet, winks, and says, “But I’m thinking of a better name. Iron Man sounds a bit to masculine, right? Why not… Iron Woman? Keep the iron part, that’s the good part. But… the Iron Woman,” Tony grins, showing them her perfect white teeth and glaring out with ice-cold eyes, “That’s who I am now.”

They don’t know that this is just another mask. They think it’s another part of her, another addition to the genius-billionaire-nymphomaniacal-philanthropist. But this is just another face.

Deep down inside, in the back of her mind, where cobwebs are covering the hurt and the pain and the misery, Tony Stark sees another face covering the monster.

After all, Iron Woman was just another layer of the armor.

\-----

She meets Agent Clint Barton when she’s dying of Palladium Poisoning. Of course, she doesn’t know who he actually is. He calls himself Carl Burns, and although the name is enough to put anyone off, she keeps him near her. He’s sexy, funny, and can actually cook worth a damn. Tony, of course, tries to get into his pants, but after several failed attempts, she just lets him become a friend.

 _Friend_. She never thought she’d hear that term again.

By the time Tony finds out that Carl Burns is working for SHIELD, they’re already good enough friends for her to let that pass. She knows he could rat her out, leave her in the dust, but he doesn’t. He could drop the act, hate her, make her wish she never lived (he wouldn’t even have to try), but he doesn’t. He stays, and he cooks her things, and he presses little platonic kisses to the side of her head when she’s been working too hard and starts yelling at her robots.

Sometimes, she thinks the only reason he stayed was because he saw the monster hiding behind her eyes. But then she’s back in motion, back to loud and bright and sexy and dangerous, because she’s Tony Stark and she can’t think too often about herself and what _she_ wants.

She has too many sins to make up for to care about herself.

\-----

She spends her (last) birthday party drunk out of her mind and dying. There are bright lights and loose women and men who don’t ask questions and multi-colored alcohol and she’s spinning. She’s spinning around a dance floor in her Iron Woman suit and there are hands in her hair pouring drinks down her throat and she’s spinning around and around and

spinning and

                                                spinning and

                                there’s something slipped in her drink and

                                                                                                                                                                she doesn’t care enough to see what it is

                and she’s happy and free for the first

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                for the first time since

                                                                since Afghanistan

                                                                                                                                and she sees Carl’s face

                                                                                and he’s              

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                he’s disappointed

                                and she’s sorry but

                                                                                                                                but she can’t take it

                                                                                                                                                                                                can’t take death and

                                                this pain in her chest and

                                                                                                                                                Yinsen is screaming at her

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                don’t waste it but

                                                                                                she’s got _nothing_ _left_ and

Then, darkness. Void of anything.

And she feels like she’s back in Afghanistan. Back with the death and the sand in her mouth and the blood in her throat. Back where Yinsen isn’t just a memory and Obie was still a father and Pepper loved her.

Back when she was dying the first time.

\-----

The acid burns and tastes like coconut, but it’s better than being dead.

\-----

Coulson visits her, after everything ends. After Vanko and Pepper coming back and Rhodey apologizing (with his eyes but never to her), Coulson comes and sits with her on her couch. And she feels like she’s supposed to hate him, like she should hate what he represents and hate who he is and hate the silence and anger that comes with him. But, for once, she’s too tired to keep up the façade of hatred. Coulson takes care of her in his own way, and she can’t hide from that fact right now.

They don’t say anything, because they never do. He sits with her, watches her hold the tape that Fury had given her. When she stands up, he stands up with her. When she walks down to her workshop, he’s two steps behind her.

And when she sets the tape on fire, he simply stands next to her, watching the tape burn slowly, and asks “Why, Antonia?”

He’s the only one now who calls her Antonia, and she lets him. She lets him in because he’s tough and takes none of her shit and he’s so much like Jarvis that sometimes it physically _hurts_. So when he asks her why, she simply shakes her head and allows one real tear to fall down her cheek.

“He told me I was his greatest creation. Creation. Like I was a robot. Like I was a _toy_ ,” She spits the words out, letting her anger take over for the first time since this entire fiasco started, “Like I was something he made. I’m not his creation.”

She turns away from the fire, sitting down heavily on the workbench behind her. He follows suit, placing a hand on her shoulder. Not too close, but not too far away. Always thinking, Coulson was.

“I made myself,” Tony says, and watches the fire, and sees the monster reflect in her eyes.

\-----

She likes Bruce Banner the minute she meets him. He’s quiet, reserved, slow to smile but even slower to anger. You’d never know he has a burning green rage monster hiding under her skin.

(A lot like Tony’s monster; only hers is red and black and blue and looks like her after a bar fight, after a war, after her dad’s finished taking out his drunken anger on his five year old daughter.)

Tony likes him because he doesn’t have the sharp edges she cuts herself on. He doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t try to turn her and make her different. He takes her at face value, but underneath all the bravado and the smirks and the smell of alcohol that seems to permeate around her, Bruce Banner sees what she is. He sees the woman behind the armor, sees the beast that’s been threatening to burst out of her skin since Coulson told her “Agent Barton’s been compromised”. He sees a kindred spirit, just like she does.

She decides she’ll help Bruce Banner. He doesn’t deserve to have a monster waiting under his skin.

Not like she does.

\-----

“Big ego in a suit of armor,” Captain America sneers down at her, makes her feel small, inadequate, dirty, “Take that off, what are you?”

She should say what she thinks. Should tell the truth, at least this once. To her hero. But Tony Stark is not weak, and she’s not insufficient, and she’s not _dirty_. This was her hero, the man she grew up worshiping. The man Aunt Peggy would talk about and get stars in her eyes and sigh like she’s back in the 1940’s and she’s still called a dame. This is not her hero. This is the _new_ Captain America. This is the Captain America that looks at Tony and sees her father. This is the Captain America that sees a woman in a position of power and thinks Peggy. She’s everyone but herself in his eyes, and she can’t take that.

Tony wants to bring him down a peg. Bring him down to her level. He’s self- righteous, entitled, he’s the first hero of the Americas and he thinks he’s better than a five-four woman in three inch heels and red lipstick. Thinks he’s better than her, and in the back of her mind, she knows he is. But out here, where she’s Queen Bitch, she can’t have that. She needs him to feel inferior to _her_.

So she glares at him, smiling grimly at blonde hair and cold eyes, and pats his cheek softly, like he’s slow, like he can’t understand her, “Why, I’m a genius, billionaire, nymphomaniacal, philanthropist.”

And it works. He glares at her, but something shifts in his eyes. He doesn’t look at her like she’s Peggy, or like she’s Howard. He looks at her like she’s nothing, and that’s more than she ever gets.

Natasha, Clint’s ex-girlfriend and resident Master Assassin, glowers at her from the side. She knows what the red-head sees. She sees the monster. And Tony can’t help but think “Good. She sees me. She can see me.”

“I know guys with none of that worth ten of you,” The Captain replies, stepping up and trying to make her back off. She doesn’t move, “I've seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You're not the one to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you.”

And it stings, it hurts. It’s like the car battery and the waterboarding and the sand all over again. It’s seeing Yinsen die and watching Obie tear out her self-made heart and “You are my greatest creation,” and the Palladium poisoning and hearing Coulson say “Agent Barton has been compromised,” all at once. Can’t he see her? Can’t he see the sins she’s committed, what she’s been making up for since she crawled out of that god-forsaken desert? She wouldn’t just lie down on the wire. She’d press herself into the wire, she’d detonate it herself. She’d do anything to make up for what she’s done. But he doesn’t see that. And she’s too smart to say that.

“I think I would just cut the wire.” She smirks, letting an inkling of pain show through. He doesn’t see it. He doesn’t see the monster. He just sees Antonia Edlyn Stark.

Now, she’s nothing but a mouse in his eyes. Nothing but a shallow glass pane, pretty to look at, but thin and destructive. “Always a way out... You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero.”

 _Pretending_? She thinks, _Who says I’m pretending to be anything? I’m not pretending to be a hero. I know I’m not. I’m a monster. Nothing more. I’m no hero. Yinsen was a hero. You are a hero. I’m nothing._

\-----

“We’re not soldiers,” She hisses, and it’s true. ~~Agent~~ ~~Phil~~ Coulson, he was a soldier. Once. Before Loki ran him through and forced him to leave ~~her~~ them. And Cap, Cap is a soldier. He fought side-by-side with friends, with brothers, and he watched them die in his arms. The rest of them, they’re just children playing war. They don’t know anything anymore because their glue had disintegrated and the tape holding them together is torn down to a single thread. There’s almost nothing left of the Avengers. Of this team, this time bomb waiting for the slightest push so that it can detonate and doom everyone. Just a ragtag team of a metal woman with too many sins, a war-torn man out of time, a Russian with too much red on her ledger, and a broken circus reject with daddy issues. They’re all that’s left of Fury’s Avengers, and they won’t win this fight.

But they’ll try anyway.

\-----

Battles are messy. Tony knew this. Battles were chaos and danger and death wrapped in a continent package and delivered on the battlefield three days in advance. There’s no room for error or arguments. She listens to what Cap orders and she does it, because she knows they couldn’t win this without him. She shoots aliens off of Clint ( _and thank_ God _, he’s_ back _, and he might not be whole but he’s_ back), she covers Thor when there’s too many surrounding him, she spots for Cap and Natasha, she does whatever she can because while Tony Stark isn’t a hero, Iron Woman is. So she fights and she prays to whoever may be listening, whether it be God or some other entity, that they’ll make it through the battle.

For Coulson.

For Phil.

(She used to joke that his name was Agent. Now, it seems like that very joke was the worst thing that she’d ever done.)

Tony only allows herself a moment to get composed when a fresh wave of grief floods through her system at the thought of the Agent. But a battle is no time for grief, so she picks herself up (again, always picking herself up again) and she goes forward. Flies into the belly of the beast, literally. She does what she can to atone for her sins because that’s all she can do anymore.

Fight and win, or die trying.

\-----

Chaos reigns as queen on the city-turned-battlefield. Iron Woman weaves between buildings, blasting what she can and telling Thor about what she can’t. There’s blood around her and the smell of sweat permeating in her suit, and she wishes she’d put in some sort of cooling system but she doesn’t have time anymore. There’s not enough time left in the world because they’re sending a nuke and she’s the only one who can stop it.

Ironic. The former weapons manufacturer is the only one to stop one of the most deadly weapons. In all honesty, she probably created the nuke.

But there wasn’t time for analyzing. There wasn’t time for anything. All she had to do was piggy-back this nuke through the giant portal and hope for the best.

“Hey, Clint?” She mumbles, grunting with the force of pushing the nuke up.

Clint, she knows, is busy trying to keep himself alive, but he answers anyway, “Yeah, Tones?”

 _Tones._ She didn’t realize how much she missed that nickname. “Who am I, Clint?”

“You’re Iron Woman,” He answers immediately, and she takes it. Because it’s better than being Antonia Stark.

It’s better than being a monster.

\-----

Space is silent.

Tony isn’t quite sure why she didn’t expect it, but space was silent and empty and dark and it reminded her too much of a cave in Afghanistan.

She’s suffocating and she’s dying and the suit goes dark but she can’t help but watch the nuke fly into the epicenter of the alien invasion. She watches it hit, and she watches it explode, and, in the back of her mind, she hears herself saying “Debt, repaid.”

Because although Loki isn’t dead, she stopped her city from being destroyed. She stopped this alien invasion. She stopped a nuke from turning her city into a crater. She did what she had to. What Phil would have done.

And then her eyes close, because she’s done pretending to be a hero.

\-----

Black. Void. Emptyness.

Then, light. Sound. Bursts of green, then silver and red. Then, red, white, and blue fill her vision, and she’s left staring up into ice-blue eyes. Her heart, her real heart, the black and shriviled thing in her chest that doesn't really work anymore, pounds loudly in her chest. The reactor forces itself to keep up.

And all she can think about is how Death refuses to take her. All she can think about is the relief in Cap’s eyes, the sheer happiness she sees in him when she opens her eyes. Like suddenly, she’s something. Like suddenly, she matters.

“Please tell me somebody kissed me.”

And there, back to being nothing in Steve Rogers eyes. That’s what she has to be. She can’t have him thinking she’s a hero.

Iron Woman is a hero. Tony Stark is not.

\-------------------------------------------------------------

**END**

**Author's Note:**

> Totally different writing style I'm trying out here. Not sure if it worked okay, that's why I'd really like some feedback. I'll try not to get pissy if it's not "OMG I LOVE IT", and if it's not, I might not even reply. Not because I don't appreciate it - don't get me wrong, I do - it's just that I sometimes put my foot in my mouth and speak, or type, before I think. I'm working on it. If anything, I'll just say "Thanks for the input", because I'm really trying to get better at accepting criticism.  
> The heavy stuff over, I really think I might continue this. I said that with the Teen Wolf thing, but this isn't going to be multi-chapter, just like different fics every time. SERIES. That's the word. And I think I'll go back to regular writing; this disjointed, polysyndeton-centric writing was hell on my "Everything has to be perfectly structured" mind. I'm in AP Lang, it comes with the territory.  
> That's it for notes, because if I don't stop now, I never will. If you've read all these, I am giving you a virtual cookie and/or hug.  
> Bye guys!


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